Date: Sat, 01 Jul 2000 22:17:14 -0400
From: Chris Ambidge
Subject: *Integrator* issue 2000-3
INTEGRATOR, the newsletter of Integrity/Toronto
volume 2000-3, issue date 2000 06 19
copyright 2000 Integrity/Toronto. The hard-copy version of this
newsletter carries the ISSN 0843-574X
Integrity/Toronto Box 873 Stn F Toronto ON Canada M4Y 2N9
== Contents ==
[2000-3-1]
A NURTURING AUTHORITY / A paper on the authority of the biblical texts,
by Sylvia Keesmaat
[2000-3-2]
HELLO, MY NAME IS... / Thoughts on the 2000 Integrity Retreat, by Janet Bruce
[2000-3-3]
LIFE AFTER LAMBETH? / Sr Thelma-Anne's addresses at the 2000 Integrity Retreat,
first of four parts
========
[2000-3-1]
A NURTURING AUTHORITY
A paper on the authority of the biblical texts
by Sylvia Keesmaat
Whenever the church is faced with difficult issues that require
discernment around the biblical text, the question of authority
comes up; particularly how seriously one side, or the other, regards
the authority of the biblical text. This article is an exploration
of two issues that arise out of this question of authority. The
first is this: if the authority of the Bible is rooted in God, what
kind of authority does God demonstrate? And, second, what would it
mean if Christians really regarded this text as authoritative, for
all of their lives?
First, what do we find when we consider the authority of our God?
Let us look at a number of texts where God's authority is displayed,
so that we may see what happens when this authority takes flesh, as
it were.
The first text is Exodus 32-34. The Israelites are in the wilderness
and they are getting restless, so Aaron fashions for them a golden
calf. God, as you can imagine, is furious, and decides to destroy
this stiff-necked people, and to create, out of Moses, a new nation.
In the face of God's anger, Moses has the audacity to call God to
task. He reminds God that people are watching, and if what they see
is destruction they will assume that Yahweh is a God who redeems
only to destroy. What is at stake here is the very nature of God's
authority: is God going to exercise power for destruction, or
forgiveness?
After considerable struggle between God and Moses, the astounding
promise is announced: "I hereby make a covenant. Before all your
people I will create marvels, such as have not been created in all
the earth or in any nation; and all the people among whom you live
shall see the work of the Lord; for it is an awesome thing I will do
with you" (Exodus 34.10). The authority of God is an authority that
acts in forgiveness and in re-creation. Out of a stiff-necked
people, this God will enact a new thing, create a world which will
cause all peoples to marvel. God's authority results in re-creation
which will bless the ends of the earth.
Faced with disobedience, Yahweh God chooses not an authority of
brutal destruction, but rather an authority of gracious forgiveness
which permits a new creation. This is a new development. Up until
this point in the narrative, forgiveness is not one of the ways that
God has acted in this story. Here we see that in the face of
unbearable sin and betrayal God finds a radically new way of
exercising divine authority, a forgiving way that enables God to
bring about a new creation.
But as the story progresses, we see that God's authority shifts
again. Although in the wilderness God has pledged a covenant of
forgiveness and new creation, nonetheless this covenant also
demanded that disobedience in the land would result in expulsion.
And so, when Israel succumbs to idolatry, they are taken into exile.
But even when God's authority has been exercised in judgement, God
is yearning, longing for this people. So in the midst of a harsh
prophecy of judgement, Hosea gives us a glimpse of the anguish in
the heart of God (Hosea 11.8-9). God's heart recoils deep within,
God's compassion grows warm and tender. God has already handed
Israel over to judgement and now the divine stomach is in a knot.
God cannot give Israel completely over to destruction. No, God is
God, not a human being; God can choose not to execute God's anger
for destruction.
So in the midst of exile, God promises to come as a king to comfort
God's people. In Isaiah 40 we see God's promise to come with
authority and might to overthrow all that is oppressing God's
people. But again, such authority is depicted in a subversive way:
He will feed his flock like a shepherd;
he will gather the lambs in his arms,
and carry them in his bosom,
and gently lead the mother sheep.
(Isaiah 40.11-12)
When Israel's God comes in authority, his rule is completely
antithetical to the rule of the other nations. This is a rule of
nurturing love, of nourishment for the flock, of comfort for the
most vulnerable, of gentle leading and love. The authority of *this*
king is the authority of a gentle, nurturing shepherd (see also
Ezekiel 34).
Now, this vision of who God is and the nature of God's authority
comes to its culmination in the story of Jesus. In Jesus we meet one
who is the true image of the creator (Col 1.15), in Jesus we see how
God's redemptive work comes to its fulfilment, in Jesus we see the
one to whom all authority on heaven and on earth has been given
(Matt 28.18). So what kind of authority is this that Jesus bears?
There is a wonderful little piece about Jesus and his disciples on
the road to Jerusalem in Mark chapter 10.32-45, which demonstrates
much of what I have been outlining here.
The disciples are walking to Jerusalem with Jesus. As they continue
along the road the disciples discover that James and John have just
asked to be the Lord's right and left hand commanders when they
conquer the city! The disciples are outraged, until Jesus interrupts
with a radical redefinition of authority. Gentiles use authority for
violent control and tyranny. But the followers of Jesus are to
exercise a servant authority.
Jesus is talking about an authority that is anti-thetical to every
authority of the world, an authority that serves, even unto death.
This is the way the story comes to its climax. The creative
authority of God in creation, the judging and redemptive authority
of God in the exodus and the exile, the forgiving authority of God
in Exodus 32-34, the nurturing authority of God who gathers the
lambs in his arms, and gives strength to the faint and the weary,
all of these come together in the life and death of Jesus. On the
cross Jesus redeems his people from all the powers that enslave, and
works forgiveness even for those who have crucified him. In his
resurrection he is the first-born of a new creation, and in the
sending of the spirit he nurtures and strengthens the small
Christian community who proclaims his name. You see, God's authority
is ultimately exercised over this world not in a violent power grab,
but through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and the
sending of the Spirit to empower such a servant community.
I have spent some time discussing authority in the context of the
biblical story because the story is fundamental to our view of
authority. It is not merely a matter of appealing to a number of
proof-texts to give us a handy definition, because the view of
authority which we live out of is always rooted in a story. If that
story is not the biblical story it will be some other story, but
there will always be a story which gives shape to our conceptions of
authority and how it functions in the world.
In the face, therefore, of the stories of our culture, the biblical
story offers an alternative vision of authority. In the face of a
consumer culture, which assures us that those who look beautiful,
smell good, and are well adjusted are the people with authority, the
biblical story assures us that those who follow a scarred saviour
and serve the least of these are the ones who authoritatively image
God in their lives. In the face of a scientistic culture which
assures us that those who are better educated have an authoritative
grasp on knowledge, the biblical story assures us that it is those
who are growing in the knowledge of the image of the creator (Col 3.10)
who possess life-transforming knowledge. In the face of an
economic system which assures us that the greatest are those willing
to put profit above the environment, the poor, their families and
the nurturing of community, the biblical story insists that those
who want to be greatest in the kingdom must lay down their lives as
a ransom for many. This is a vision which takes every other story in
our culture and turns it on its head, judging it in light of the
character of our God, and calling into question every authority that
does not submit to the suffering authority of Jesus.
This means that if the Bible functions as an authority in our life,
then the authority it bears must somehow cohere with the authority
of the God that it bears witness to. If the Bible is used therefore
in ways that deny creation and promote death, then biblical
authority is being subverted as an ideological tool of market
forces. If the Bible is being used primarily as a text of
condemnation rather than a text of forgiveness, then the Scriptures
become a word of death, not of life. If the Bible is being used to
enslave and bind up, rather than redeem and save, then the overall
thrust and intention of the biblical story is being denied. If the
Bible is being used in ways which destroy the weak and faint of
heart rather than nurture them, then the Bible is being used to
justify the kind of brutal authoritarianism that the biblical story
itself condemns. You see, the Bible itself, biblical authority
itself, stands in judgement over all such misuses and perversions of
biblical authority.
Now, granted that the Christian community is to treat the Bible as
authoritative in ways which will image their God in his creative,
redemptive, forgiving, and nurturing authority, practically what
does that mean? How does the Bible function in our lives as a text
that exercises this kind of authority?
Walter Brueggemann, in an article on canon, describes the authority
of the Bible in this way:
The authority of canon is also crucial because it is an assertion
and agreement that these books, like no others, will receive our
attention and will shape and govern our imagination. It means we
will wait on this literature for whatever words of life and truth
we expect to be given to us. It means that in this literature we
are prepared to find the criteria by which other truth (in other
literature) is to be assessed. It means our imagination is under
a discipline which precludes and judges other fields of
imagining. This literature, we confess, is our true home, held
passionately and uncompromisingly against all our homelessness.(*)
The Bible functions authoritatively insofar as it is the book which
shapes our imagination, an alternative imagination. Rather than
allowing our imagination to be captured by the metaphors and symbols
of advertising, of success and wealth and military might, the Bible
calls us to be wooed by the metaphors and symbols of the biblical
story, metaphors of creation, "liberation, healing, forgiveness,
reconciliation, homecoming, and new birth."(**) This text, then
creates a world for us which judges all other worldviews which seek
to capture our imagination, all other stories and texts which seek
to woo us and hold us and bind us up.
This means, therefore, that we do not turn to this text merely to
deal with difficult issues. If this text is our story, our script,
for how we are to live faithfully in the world, we need to be
totally immersed in the text, completely absorbed in the story, our
imaginations renewed, transformed in every aspect by the vision
which the story sets before us. Some inkling of how such an
imagination would be shaped is given in Deuteronomy 6.6-9. There,
every moment of every day is supposed to be filled with Torah, with
the story of who God is and what God has done. This story is inside
your very being, your imagination, and you should not be able to
help talking about this story to everyone, your children at home and
everyone you meet, no matter where you are. When you are awake you
tell this story, you even dream in its symbols and metaphors. This
story is on your hand so that you see it enacted in all that you do,
and on your forehead so that others see this story in all that you
think and say. Even your homes and your life in the public square
are to be shaped by this story.
What would it mean for us to treat this text as authoritative, as
the life-giving, redemptive, forgiving, and nurturing authority for
all our lives, not just for the big issues that we face as a church
or in our homes? What would it mean to live out of this vision, this
story, as teachers and students, as mothers and fathers, as lawyers,
as homemakers, as nurses, as doctors, as contractors and carpenters,
as assembly line workers, as writers, as clergy, as administrators,
as retailers? It is when this story has permeated our imagination so
thoroughly that it shapes our decisions about the way we work, and
where we work, about what food we buy and where we buy it, about
what clothes we wear and where we buy them, about what movies we
watch and where we spend our holidays, about whether we put our
money in mutual funds or give it to the poor, about whether we live
lives of hospitality or exclusion, then and only then will we be
living as if this word has anything life-giving and true to offer
our lives.
Then the question of biblical authority will be removed from inter-
church debates, and on to the streets and the warp and woof our
lives. The Bible is authoritative as the word of Life. It only
really *functions* authoritatively, then, when a biblical people
live out its story imaginatively and redemptively in their daily
lives.
==[footnotes]==
(*)Brueggemann, "Canonization and Contextuality" in *Interpretation
and Obedience: From Faithful Reading to Faithful Living*
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press) 120.
(**)Brueggemann "The Transformative Potential of the Pastoral
Office" in *Interpretation and Obedience 172.*
== ==
{Author Box: SYLVIA C KEESMAAT teaches Biblical Studies and
Hermeneutics at the Institute for Christian Studies when she is not
gardening or flying kites with her husband and daughters. She and
her family attend Church of the Redeemer, Toronto. This article is
condensed from a speech given at Christ's Church Cathedral,
Hamilton, in November 1999. }
========
[2000-3-2]
HELLO, My Name Is...
Thoughts on the 2000 Integrity Retreat
by Janet Bruce
This year's Integrity retreat, *Calling Out, Coming Out, Keeping
Out*, focused on our call to authenticity. As our fearless
leader, Sister Thelma-Anne, read passages from books and bishops
to whet our discursive appetites, we reflected on three things:
how God has called to us LGBT people of faith; how and whether we
have come out to family and close friends; and what our roles are,
or are to be, in the larger faith community. The retreat bubbled
along merrily enough until the final session, when we touched on
matters of our sexuality. It was then, ironically enough, that we
found we aren't as homo-geneous a group as - for convenience sake
- we might wish ourselves to be.
There we were, the 16 of us plus Sister T-A, circled in the Guild
Room at the Convent, all of us... what, besides queer? Some of us
are Anglican, some Catholic, and one Jewish. Most of us are out
to varying degrees, but not all of us. Several of us have been in
heterosexual marriages, and/or are biological parents, others have
never slept with a member of the opposite sex. One of us, I
understand, has never slept with a member of the same sex. Some
of us are in committed relationships, others of us aren't, can't,
or won't. Some of us have known since our childhood that we
aren't straight, others didn't discover ourselves until midlife.
A number of us realised our orientation while attempting to
discern our roles as members of the Church. Some of these people
chose a same-sex relationship over a formal role in the Church,
some have opted for religious work over monogamous partnership,
and some have elected both.
In fact, I would venture to say that a second way we 16 concur is
that we want it both ways. We can no more give up our love of God
in order to be recognised as queer than we can give up our sexual
orientation in order to be counted as a church or synagogue
member. Neither is an option for us; we are called to be lesbigay
children of God.
As Sister T-A steered us through the weekend, she presented us
with several images. The first was Paul Gibson's metaphor of the
Bible as a river, having both a main current or drift, and little
sticky stagnant spots. We can trust the main message of the
Bible, that of God's call and Christ's redemption of all of us,
without getting mired in the passages that don't fit with that
vision.
The second image was the bronze serpent, the sight of which cured
the Israelites of snake bite. Bishop Ingham suggested that we
queer Christians may be the healing bronze serpent to the
suffering straight conservatives. When I come out to people at
church or at work, will my visibility act as a hair-of-the-dog for
the homophobic hangover?
Perhaps the favourite image -- mine, at any rate, because it
presents a comical paradox -- was the bumblebee. Sister T-A read
to us, "According to the laws of aerodynamics, bumblebees are
incapable of flight. Bumblebees don't know that, and fly anyway."
The only answer any of us can give to conservatives who insist
that a practising homosexual can't be a disciple of God is, "But I
am."
In fact, we may need sometimes to give that quiet rejoinder to
other LGBTs who have lost their faith, or even to each other in
the Guild Room. Yes, despite the fact that I uphold/ disdain gay
marriage, that I have discarded/ retained my inner homophobia, and
that I am in-your-face/ in the closet, I too am a believer.
We LGBT people of faith celebrate our diversity, not merely our
distinctiveness. "In our diversity lies our strength," said one
member, quoting her bumper sticker. In similar vein, Sister
Thelma Anne recalled to us the Hebrew prophets, willing or
reluctant, meek or mighty: each one needed to be heard. Is God
calling us to be prophets in our time, "our presence," T-A
suggested, "causing others to rethink their views" -- and thereby
come a little closer to accepting us? If so, it will take all of
us, in all our glorious diversity of life experience, personality,
and values, to effect any change. That message, at least, is what
I got out of this year's Integrity retreat.
The wine and cheese party was great, too.
{Author Box: Not-yet-famous writer JANET BRUCE used to live in
Cobourg, where she met her partner Gillian. They now live in
Cabbagetown, and go to St Peter's Carlton St, where Janet edits
the parish newsletter. }
========
[2000-3-3]
LIFE AFTER LAMBETH?
This is the first of a four-part series based on Sr Thelma-
Anne's addresses to the Integrity/Toronto retreat at St John's
Convent, spring 2000.
The two companion resolutions passed at Lambeth '98 - on the
authority of scripture and on human sexuality - call us to take a
fresh look at the Bible and how we understand its authority. The
resolution on scripture "affirms that our creator God,
transcendent as well as immanent, communicates us authoritatively
through the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments". This
resolution put teeth into the resolution on human sexuality with
the words "while rejecting homosexual practice as incompatible
with Scripture ..." Is this the final word on the subject , or
can we find our lives affirmed and illuminated by the Bible?
We need not only to reflect on the authority of scripture as such
but to face our own fears as well. In his recent homily at the
celebration of the 20th anniversary of Integrity/ Vancouver,
Bishop Michael Ingham preached on the unpromising text about the
bronze serpent. The Israelites, in their journey through
wilderness pass through a snake-infested region - many are bitten
and die. God tells Moses to make a bronze serpent, and those who
look upon it are healed. Moses "is told to take the very thing
which is the poison and turn it into a means of life. The very
thing they fear must become the very thing they rely upon." So,
with the help of some good friends, let us gaze on our particular
"serpent," in order to get a perspective on the Bible that will be
life-giving, not death-dealing.
First, William Countryman. In a recent article in *The Witness*,
he speaks of Anglicanism as a tradition that allows for great
disagreement. "We rejected the authority of the pope in Rome in
the 16th century. And we also rejected the authority of the
'paper pope,' the Bible in the way that the Puritans used it, in
the 17th century. In both cases, what we rejected was a certain
way of using (or, from our perspective, abusing) authority. We
were happy to retain the traditional ministry of the church. We
claimed the Bible as our own. But we were suspicious of those who
claimed absolute authority to define the will of God, whether they
did so through the office of the papacy or in the name of the
Bible.
"Do we believe what God says? Certainly! Are we certain what God
says? that is another matter... Anglicanism did a daring thing in
the Reformation when it took the risk of dispensing with absolute
authority in this world. We all hanker after certainty. But if
we insist on having it, we run the danger of idolatry - the danger
that having a pope, whether human or on paper, will lead us to
trust in an accessible, this-worldly authority rather than in the
true God, the hidden Holy One, the One who alone fills all in all
... We chose the difficult - but spiritually safer - course of
seeking the will of God not from a single this-worldly authority
but in the confluence or congruence of several witnesses" - the
well-known "three-legged stool" of scripture, tradition and
reason.
We know that the church is older than the New Testament. In
forming the canon, it appealed to tradition. What books were
actually being read in the churches as legacies from the earlier
days of Christianity? It also appealed to reason, both historical
(which books were really from the earliest times?) and theological
(which books were consistent with what we have experienced of
God's self-disclosure?) Tradition and reason, in turn, were
tempered by scripture.
"When all is said and done," Countryman continues, " what is
really central to Anglican faith? The central thing in our faith
is a message known to us from Scripture: the proclamation of God's
love for every one of us, of God's forgiveness which doesn't wait
on us to be perfect, of God's open arms welcoming us home, of the
opportunity this good news gives us to welcome one another as
well. The truly distinct thing about Anglicanism, I think, is its
strong grip on this last thing - the opportunity for Gospel
community... Our traditional centre is not doctrine; it's *a
community seeking the will of God * [Italics added]."
Our next witness is Paul Gibson, who has given me permission to
quote from his as yet unpublished book on the authority of
scripture, designed to point out the extent to which the Lambeth
resolutions depart from classical Anglicanism. After recalling
some fairly obvious facts, eg that Christian bodies have never
agreed on the canon of scripture; that scripture itself is full of
contradictions which can only be resolved by an appeal to criteria
from an external social context; and that clear positions (such as
those on usury, slavery, and the subjection of women) have been
set aside by the Christian community, Paul Gibson goes on to say:
"We can treat the Bible as the collected literature of a people
engaged in a great spiritual pilgrimage in response to their
awareness of God as the power of salvation running through the
universe. We can treat the Bible as the reflection of their
profound intuition of the presence and purpose of God. In fact,
what we see in the Bible is their response to that divine
presence... It is this experience, told as story, that did and can
transfigure human life. The Bible communicates this experience,
makes it available, but not legislatively or logically."
The Bible, Paul Gibson argues, operates in a way comparable to
that of a sacrament - indeed, in a way similar to the Christian
belief in the Incarnation. It is also subject to the same
aberrations. Historically, people have erred in seeing only the
human or material side, or, more often, only the divine, whereas
both have to be held in tension. For example, the sacrament is
seen as so wholly the Body and Blood that only the "appearances"
of bread and wine remain. Jesus is seen as so wholly divine that
his humanity is ignored. So, likewise, the Bible becomes the
"authoritative word of God" in such an unqualified way that the
human "response to that divine presence" is discounted. It is
forgotten that the Bible is also a collection of literature,
spanning two millennia, much of it shaped and limited by the
cultural milieu of those who wrote it.
"On the other hand, the Bible is tied together by great themes
which appear and reappear in its pages. They are the themes of
liberation of the oppressed, empowerment of the alienated, the
gift of community, judgement for those who practise idolatry and
exploitation, exile, return, forgiveness, wholeness, the
transforming power of self-giving, hope. They are the themes of
salvation. They are themes which, for Christians, culminate in
the vision of the reign of God proclaimed and enacted by Jesus in
both his failure and his victory, a divine commonwealth already
present for those who will accept and lay hold of it. [ I would
add, the theme of inclusiveness, as more and more of those
regarded as beyond the pale are seen to be beloved by God and
included in the divine community.] This vision, which is the
subject of the Bible, is God's word to us... our intimation of the
purpose of God as the power of salvation running through the
universe, and *yet [the Bible remains] still the collected
literature of our faith tradition.*" It is not "a stream of
information unconditioned by the process of history."
Presenting another image, Paul Gibson writes, "I want you to think
of the Jewish-Christian faith tradition as a great river,
beginning in small and often primitive tributaries, moving
sometimes quickly and sometimes slowly through the varying
landscapes of history, full of backwaters, undertows, eddies, even
swamps along the shoreline, but always with a strong central
current that carries it along [the great themes outlined in the
preceding paragraph] ... And the Bible is the chart, the map, of
this river. All the backwaters, undertows, eddies and swamps are
there on the chart because they are part of the story. But the
central current, what the 16th century Anglican theologian Richard
Hooker called, "the general drift", is what really matters." That
is the criterion by which individual texts are to be judged,
whether we can trust them as part of the central current or
whether they are best left behind in the backwaters, undertows,
eddies, or swamps where they belong.
So far, we have said much about reason and tradition, but not a
great deal about experience. To my mind, experience is of central
and crucial importance. To say that scripture is the record of
human *response* to God implies that God's call has been
*experienced*. Tradition may be thought of as the cumulative
experience of the faith community, tested over time and under the
guidance of the Spirit. And reason, if it is not to be sterile,
depends on experience for its data and for its processes. It is
the genius and the gift of Anglicanism to bring all these strands
together - a gift too precious to be compromised or lost.
{Author Box: SR THELMA-ANNE SSJD writes a regular column for
*Integrator* entitled "Ways Of Prayer". She lives at Maison-St-
Jean in suburban Montreal]
=== end of text ===
End of volume 2000-3 of Integrator, the newsletter of Integrity/Toronto
copyright 2000 Integrity/Toronto
comments please to Chris Ambidge, Editor
chris.ambidge@utoronto.ca OR
Integrity/Toronto Box 873 Stn F Toronto ON Canada M4Y 2N9
-- --
Chris Ambidge chris.ambidge@utoronto.ca
Integrity/Toronto http://www.whirlwind.ca/integrity
Integrity is a member of the Alliance of Lesbian & Gay Anglicans
http://www.alga.org